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Russia plans to equip its military sharpshooters with a new sniper rifle soon, the director of the Central Research Institute for Precision Machine Building (TsNIITochMash), Dmitry Semizorov said.

“By 2020, we will make sure that all our machine tools are ready to turn out a 100-percent Russian-made rifle,” Semizorov was quoted by Sputnik News. The first batch of the new sniper rifles, aptly called Tochnost (Accuracy), will be supplied to the Federal Guard Service (FGS) this year, he added. The new model is slated to become the main sniper weapon used by the Russian military and intelligence services.

According to sputniknews.com, the Tochnost, a spinoff of the T-5000 rifle, uses conventional and armor-piercing rounds and is in the same class as the world’s best mass-produced sniper rifles available today. In an interview with Radio Sputnik, Mikhail Degtyarev, editor-in-chief of the journal “Kalashnikov. Arms & Ammo,” said that designers of the new rifle have worked in close connection with representatives of the military and special services.

“While the FGS snipers gave the Tochnost their approval, the military representatives were suspicious about the origin of the materials and parts it’s made of. It is with these tougher demands in mind that the designers are now making sure that the Tochnost is a 100-percent Russian-made weapon”, Degtyarev added.

“The new sniper rifle gives credit to Russian arms and the Russian armed forces. Even though it is not going to phase out the sniper rifles currently in use, the Tochnost is a real game changer in the field of military sharpshooting,” Degtyarev explained.

The Tochnost sniper rifle is better than its predecessor in several key characteristics – a shooting range of over 2 kilometers, low recoil, a convenient trigger mechanism, a special sight and, most importantly, a specially primed rifle barrel.